With One Hand Waving Free

You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted. — Psalm 40: 5

Getting into my car after clocking out at work last night, I wanted to find the worship song rattling around in my head and play on my phone through the car stereo. I looked on my YouTube app. I stopped to look at the recommended videos. I saw in the list a one slide video I know was removed from YouTube months ago. I know that because it was one of my favs.

It was Bob Dylan singing Mr Tambourine Man at my alma mater, Towson University several years ago. I knew this particular rendition of this Dylan classic because I’d purchased the bootleg concert CD on Ebay. I remember sharing this particular cut with folks I respected over the years, and their reaction to it went from mediocre to terrible. I’ve sense stopped sharing.

Last night, I drove up Quintard in Anniston, AL with the volume up and singing loud and joyfully. The song itself is a bookmark for me. Its always brought me joy, and its endured my personal changes and growth and years of age. Plus, it was recorded at Towson, which may not mark memorable years for me, but its a part of my personal history.

As I continued to sing and grew more nostalgic and more brazen in my gestures and volume, I approached a stop light, and I thought came to me. It was one of those thoughts I couldn’t determine if it was purely me or it was Holy Spirit speaking to me. Regardless (I’ve come to not spend much time determining which is which when it blesses me), this rendition of Mr Tambourine Man was a gift to me, a sign of grace.

When that struck me, a gift from God, it made me cry. I knew I was loved by God again.

I was originally looking for a worship song, Waiting Here for You. A religious mindset might think that song was much more edifying and brought more glory to God than a song associated by some with LSD use and the 60s drug culture as a whole. My reaction to that thought is to say or write simply, “But I encountered the God of grace, my Daddy, in the song as I sang it last night.” It was a gift to me. Daddy came into the car gave me a token of his love to me because he knows me so well.

That’s what struck my heart last night. Daddy God knows me so well he knew what would bless me. This particular video disappeared from YouTube months ago, but it returned literally yesterday. It popped up on my list of recommendations from YouTube the same day. Holy Spirit nudged me to look at the app when I got in the car. I found it and played it, and it graciously, worshipfully led me back to my source of life and love and joy, God himself.

So, today, I worship my Great God dancing beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow.

God has multiplied his thoughts to us. Our God is worth worshiping today. He loves us so.